Happy New Year

I have had a great start to 2014. One of the miniature Ted paintings 'Mist-Ted' sold yesterday and will be on its way to his new family on Monday morning.

I have been working away at both the drawing and the painting over the last few days. Neither are finished yet but with the painting I am getting close. I am still really enjoying developing the feeling of light. Tight curly hair takes an AGE to paint though which is slowing me down at the moment.

For those of you that thought I would finish the drawing first I am sorry but developing the really dark areas in pen takes a long time. The nose was also quite challenging to create. One benefit to doing a watercolour and a pen at the same time is that it makes me seem quite quick at the watercolour.  Working in pen is just slow. I have lost count of the number of hours I have been working on this already. Its very relaxing though and fun to see a puppy emerge out of the white paper as you work.

Talking of Puppies. I thought you would all enjoy some New Years Resolutions from my faithful furry friends Ella and Harry. Do any of these remind you of things your pets do?

1. We will try our best to NEVER interrupt our artist’s creative flow ….UNLESS…..…she has become so absorbed in her work that she has forgotten to eat. Interrupting her is then our duty as her furry companions, isn’t it? After all a healthy creative spirit must be fed … and we are healthy and very creative if allowed to be… and if we don’t remind her to feed herself then we don’t get fed either.

2. We have noticed that our artist sometimes likes to paint in the company of others... So if a tube of paint comes within reach, we will try harder to grab it and use it. Our artist companion can keep the brushes, as she seems to be very attached to these furry ended sticks, sometimes putting them in her mouth and even occasionally stroking it against her cheek but they are small and puny not like the big ones we find when out and about. Of course our tails and paws and mouths work much, much better at covering a large surface area very quickly but we won’t let on just how effective they are or we might become her latest art tools and not just her companions!

3. If we see our 2 legged mom place her painting or drawing on the mantelpiece… We have learnt that this means she needs to walk away from it and think about it for a while. If she stays nearby there seems to be a huge temptation to fiddle. As faithful hounds we will therefore try harder to distract her. We will fetch our leads or balls and take her outside and let her breathe in some fresh air.

4. When out and about… We will be more alert to her observations especially when she has that thing called a camera with her because these seem to be the times she finds things really interesting. We both struggle at the moment to understand what exactly it is that’s so intriguing even though we look very hard too. Maybe with some extra effort and practice this year we will ‘see’ better. It’s obviously something transient that our mom sees because she seems to ‘move to somewhere else’ and look there shortly after we have arrived at the first place.

Any other ideas would be very gratefully received by Ella and Harry

Happy New Year from us all

Ona